Brooke Avery
Analysis of Malcolm X and “The Black Revolution”
A major leader during the 1960s, Malcolm X was known for his radical ideas and for his Muslim beliefs. Malcolm X was convincing because he made great use of rhetoric techniques. For example, in his speech “The Black Revolution” he uses agitation, propaganda, and rhetorical schemes and tropes. His main focus in the speech was to target his audience’s emotions because he knew that once he could get to their emotions, they would be more open to his ideas. Using rhetorical devices, such as engaging his audience’s emotions in his speech, was very effective.
Malcolm X, formally known as Malcolm Little, was well known for his extreme ideas on racism in American Society. His radical ideas were due to circumstances that he encountered growing up. According to Spartacus Educational, Malcolm was the son of a Baptist preacher and a mother from the West Indies. In 1925, Malcolm was born in Nebraska but his family later moved to Michigan because his father had a confrontation with the Ku Klux Klan. When his father died and his mother was sent to a mental institution, Malcolm moved to Boston with his sister. There he became addicted to cocaine and was involved in crime such as robbery. This later led him to ten years in prison. While in prison, Malcolm converted to the Black Muslim faith. Once released in 1952, Malcolm met Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam. Muhammad influenced him and deepened Malcolm’s involvement in the Muslim faith. Because of his faith, he changed his last name from Little to X, believing that “Little” was a representation of white control. Malcolm X supported black power and spoke against integration until he traveled to Mecca. After his travels in 1964, Malcolm left the Nation of Islam and instead of speaking against integration, spoke of world brotherhood and supported blacks working with whites to end racial inequality. He was despised for his change in thought and in February of 1965, died of a gunshot. Three black Muslims were accused of his assassination.
Malcolm spoke “The Black Revolution” in June of 1963 to an audience at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York (“The Black Revolution” sec. 1). The speech addressed what was going on in America during the 1960’s. Based on “History of the United States 1945-1964,” America was very busy at the time in terms of international affairs. The Cold War was becoming more peaceful and the United States was secretly getting involved in the Vietnam War. Apart from international problems, America was also dealing with equality among minorities and whites at the home front. During the 1960’s many people who believed in equality for all fought back against inequality and segregation. Some of the leaders during this generation included Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Cesar Chavez. The Civil Rights Movement was a fight against segregation that impacted the whole nation. Nonviolent resisters staged sit-ins and protested. Other people took matters into their own hands in order to gain equality.
Malcolm stands out for his extreme theologies and radical speeches. We can see this in “The Black Revolution”. The “Black Revolution” was a speech in which he expresses his belief that the only resolution to the racial inequality in America is complete separation. Malcolm backs up his argument comparing wolves, who he says are white people, and sheep, who are black. He says they can’t be mixed together in a den, a metaphor for society. Malcolm says this because in the Bible, God doesn’t even let his sheep integrate with goats, let alone wolves.
In “The Black Revolution” Malcolm X argues that truth will set people free. The truth, as Malcolm X believes, is not Christianity but rather the Muslim faith. In order for us to see the truth, we have to submit to Allah, the Muslim God. He believes the truth will open their eyes and help them become independent and realize who their enemies are. Malcolm adds on that whites have always known the truth, and that the reason they’re not showing blacks the truth is because they know that it will set them free. He continues and says that is the reason why blacks have been suppressed in America.
In the middle of his speech, Malcolm X furthers his point that there must be separation when he says that the reason blacks must separate from whites is because God will punish whites for what they have done. Malcolm believes blacks should leave before God strikes down on whites, in order to not be stuck in between. He goes on to say that in the past, God has always separated the abused from the abuser, so it’s fitting to do so in present time.
Toward the end of his speech, Malcolm reinforces his point that the only permanent solution is complete separation. He says that even if things were desegregated and blacks were given better jobs, it wouldn’t solve the problems of inequality. Malcolm X speaks of the government giving blacks goods, supplies, and machinery to help support them to create their own society. In his conclusion, he emphasizes his belief not to integrate with white men, and he also says America must take action and give blacks what is owed to them before God takes action.
One reason Malcolm X is effective is because he bases his rhetoric on his audience. He was invited to the Abyssinian Baptist Church by Dr. Powell, who was a congressman and a leader in the Harlem community. The members of the Abyssinian Baptist Church weren’t Muslims and didn’t share the same point of views as Malcolm X, which is a reason why he chose to speak at the church. According to Mary McEdwards, an Assistant Professor of Speech at CSU Northridge, “In reality, the audience of the agitator is always the public, the members of the community or nation. They do not hold his opinion, they are indifferent, or more probably, hostile to his view because he advocates a change so extreme that they see themselves as possible losers if the change occur” (McEdwards, page 38). Malcolm X’s goal was to persuade the members of the church and his enemies to want complete segregation; he knew that the only way that he could persuade the members of the church and his enemies to have the same views was to stir them up emotionally.
Agitation also contributes to Malcolm X’s effective rhetoric. Mary McEdwards explains what agitation is, “Agitation is an unwarranted and unethical attack on persons, institutions, and ideas” (page 36). McEdwards states that agitation means “to move with a violent motion; to stir up or excite; to perturb” (page 36). Throughout the speech, Malcolm uses agitation to stir up emotions, causing the black masses to second guess their decision of integration with the white oppressors. His whole speech unethically attacks the idea of integration. One example is when he said, “Only a blind man will walk into the open embrace of his enemy, and only a blind people, a people who are blind to the truth about their enemies, will seek to embrace or integrate with that enemy.” This statement causes people who want to integrate with the white oppressors to have doubts because they don’t want to be seen as blind people. He also attacks the idea of integration by using agitation when he states, “Jesus two thousand years ago looked down the wheel of time and saw your and my plight here today and he knew the tricky high court, Supreme Court, desegregation decisions would only lull you into a deeper sleep, and the tricky promises of the hypocritical politicians on civil rights legislation would only be designed to advance you and me from ancient slavery to modern slavery” (Paragraph 6). The black masses were trying to overthrow their suppression and for Malcolm to say that the legislation is just trying to advance them to modern slavery would affect a lot of people’s emotions. Malcolm X understood that in order for him to change people’s beliefs and to influence them into making radical decisions, he would have to incorporate agitation into his speech to strike their emotions.
Throughout the whole speech Malcolm X mainly relies on pathos to appeal to his audience. Pathos, according to The Art of Rhetoric, is the appeal based on emotion. His words are very emotionally loaded and are very figurative when speaking about whites, blacks, and America. Malcolm continuously refers to whites in a negative connotation. One example of this would be when he says, “God wants us to separate ourselves from this wicked white race…” (paragraph11).By calling the white race the “wicked white race”, Malcolm automatically sets a barrier between whites and his audience. The word “wicked” is a negative connotation, and no one wants to be a part of that. This type of propaganda is also called name-calling, “…this device consists of labeling people or ideas with words of bad connotation…when the propagandist uses name-calling, he doesn’t want us to think-merely react…” (Cross, paragraphs 4 &7). Malcolm’s use of the phrase is emotionally charged and lacks real evidence or logic. When Malcolm uses name-calling, he contributes to his pathos-based speech.
Malcolm uses name-calling in his speech, but he also uses another method of propaganda called “glory by association”. He does this when he says, “He [Elijah Muhammad] warns us to remember Noah never taught integration, Noah taught separation; Moses never taught integration, Moses taught separation” (paragraph 10). Malcolm compares the situation at hand with biblical situations. Glory by association helps when you want to give your audience a good feeling, “In glory by association, the propagandist tries to transfer the positive feelings of something we love and respect to the group or idea he wants us to accept” (Cross). Malcolm tries to justify his solution by saying that biblical figures did the same thing. Being that his audience is mostly a religious group, this method is very effective because they are deeply rooted in religious history. His audience is more inclined to believe him since he’s referring to something that they firmly believe in.
This same concept connects to one of Denton and Hahn’s points in “The Rhetorical Presidency”. They say that political language has many functions, one of which is to connect past glories to the audience, “An important function of political language, therefore, is to link us to past glories and reveal the future in order to reduce uncertainty in a world of ever increasing complexity and doubt” (paragraph 15). By connecting his audience to the past glories of Moses and Noah, Malcolm makes his solution more appealing. They see that Moses and Noah were successful, so it gives the audience more assurance that they will be successful if they choose to go along with Malcolm.
Along with connecting past glories to the audience, Malcolm adds on to his pathos-based speech by using the concept called Argumentum Ad Populum, also known as stroking. He uses this when he refers to blacks, “No one is more innocent than the poor, blind American so-called Negro” (paragraph 11). When Malcolm calls his audience innocent, poor, and blind, he patronizes them, which is exactly what argumentum ad populum is all about, “…being stroked or soothed with compliments until they come to like the person doing the complimenting-and by extension, his or her ideas”(Cross, paragraph 14). Although being called innocent, poor and blind isn’t a compliment, the audience is still appealed to Malcolm because he has mercy and gives a sense that he feels sorry for them. In turn, this makes the audience more willing to accept what Malcolm is connected to, more specifically his ideas.
Malcolm X’s rhetoric was also effective due to his continuous use of rhetorical schemes and tropes. He believed the only way the black masses would really be free from slavery was through truth. Throughout his speech he reiterates that point through “anaphora”, which is the repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of successive clauses (“Rhetorical Schemes and Tropes”, number 3). One example is when he says, “Truth will open our eyes and enable us to see the white wolf as he really is. Truth will stand us on our own feet. Truth will make us walk for ourselves…” (Paragraph 6).He uses this technique to make his audience believe that they don’t know the truth, and by believing him they would learn what the truth is. Another rhetorical device Malcolm uses in “The Black Revolution” is personification. He uses this method to emphasize his point that blacks should not live in America. He states, “If America can’t atone for the crime she has committed against the twenty million so-called Negroes, if she can’t undo the evils that she has brutally and mercilessly heaped upon our people these past four hundred years, The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that America has signed her own doom. And our people, would be foolish to accept her deceitful offers of integration at this late date into her doomed society” (paragraph 12). Malcolm refers to America as “she” and “her”. Doing this makes it seem like America has a body and soul. This method helps because it puts more power into his statement. It gives the audience the idea that America is a person, and that they must fight against her.
Overall, Malcolm X’s rhetoric is very effective and because of this, his speeches are convincing. He utilized rhetoric to help in his persuasion to his audience that his way was the right way. Malcolm made it seem that the audience would be foolish and would be going against the teachings of Biblical figures if they didn’t do what he suggested. His speech was strong and powerful and had the ability to completely change someone’s beliefs in a matter of minutes. His rhetoric was effective enough to brainwash someone if they were not aware of all the rhetorical devices that he used.
